July 27, 2001. Copyright 2001. Graphic News. All rights reserved.

The wit and gaffes of Prince Philip

LONDON, July 27, Graphic News: Queen ElizabethÕs gaffe-prone husband Prince Philip almost reduced a teenager to tears on Thursday after telling him he was Òtoo fatÓ to be an astronaut. Philip, 80, made the remark when stocky, 13-year-old Andrew Adams said he had an ambition to go up in a space rocket.

ÒHe told me ÔYouÕll have to lose weight if you want to go in thatÕ,Ó Andrew was quoted as saying. ÒIt hurt my feelings, but I tried to laugh it off by pretending he was only joking.Ó Philip was visiting a rocket project at Salford University in northern England.

Philip is perhaps best known for his sometimes tactless, off-the-cuff remarks that have managed to offend, among others, Asians, Chinese, Hungarians, and Scots.

In 1969 at a Royal Variety Performance he asked singer Tom Jones: ÒWhat do you gargle with, pebbles?Ó 

During a visit to China in 1986 he described Beijing as ÒghastlyÓ and told British students: ÒIf you stay here much longer youÕll all be slitty-eyed.Ó

Speaking the same year at a World Wildlife Fund meeting: ÒIf it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.Ó

In Australia, in 1992, when asked to stroke a Koala bear he quipped: ÒOh no, I might catch some ghastly disease.Ó

In 1995, the one-time naval officer asked a Scottish driving instructor: ÒHow do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?Ó

And in 1981, when Britain was in the grips of a savage recession, he remarked: ÒEverybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed.Ó

Other memorable gaffes include: ÒIt looks as if it was put in by an Indian,Ó commenting on a fusebox in a Scottish factory in 1999.

Sometimes his plain-speaking has caused deep offence such as his comments -- amid calls to ban firearms -- following the shooting dead of sixteen kindergarten pupils and their teacher in Dunblane, Scotland, in March 1996. ÒIf a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?Ó

ÒBloody silly fool,Ó he said referring to a Cambridge University car park attendant who did not recognise him in 1997.

  ÒThey must be out of their mindsÓ -- on being told in 1982 that annual population growth in the Solomon Islands was only 5%.

ÒYour country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species in the world,Ó he said after accepting a conservation award in Thailand in 1991.

During a 1993 visit to Hungary he commented to a Briton: ÒYou canÕt have been here that long -- you havenÕt got a pot belly.Ó

ÒYou managed not to get eaten, then?, the Prince asked a student in 1998 who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea.
/ENDS
Source: Graphic News